The Wych Elm

The Wych Elm by Tana French

Published by Viking

February 2019

One night changes everything for Toby. He's always led a charmed life - until a brutal attack leaves him damaged and traumatised, unsure even of the person he used to be. He seeks refuge at his family's ancestral home, the Ivy House, filled with memories of wild-strawberry summers and teenage parties with his cousins.

But not long after Toby's arrival, a discovery is made: a skull, tucked neatly inside the old wych elm in the garden.

As detectives begin to close in, Toby is forced to examine everything he thought he knew about his family, his past, and himself.

A spellbinding standalone from a literary writer who turns the crime genre inside out, The Wych Elm asks what we become, and what we're capable of, if we no longer know who we are.

The Wych Elm (or Witch if you are in the States) is the new stand-alone crime novel by Tana French.  Now I'll get my niggles out of the way instantly - the chapters are exhaustingly long, if like me you cannot stop reading in the middle of one, and secondly I hated the central character Toby.  Aside from all of that, I did enjoy this book so please read on!

Toby is a self-centred so-and-so and the sort of person that everything goes right for - he can talk his way out of anything and has had a lifetime of things falling into his lap; lucky boy.  He works for an art gallery and they decide to have an exhibition that is going to bring a lot of publicity their way, however things go wrong, Toby gets into trouble at work and then to top it all off, his flat gets burgled and he ends up in a very serious way in the local hospital as a result.  He needs to recuperate and his family decide that the best thing for him to do would be to return to the Ivy House, home of his uncle Hugo who is sadly dying.  Toby is now a former shadow of himself but could be the ideal companion for his uncle in his final months of life.  

Toby goes to stay with Uncle Hugo, and takes his girlfriend Melissa along with him.  He spends a lot of time reminiscing with his cousins Susannah and Leon and the whole family get together every Sunday for a big lunch.  It is at one of these lunches that Susannah's children discover a skull hidden in the Wych Elm at the bottom of the garden.  As luck would have it, or not in this case, the skull turns out to be human which prompts a visit from the local constabulary and a murder case is opened when it is revealed that the skull belongs to an old school friend of Toby and his cousins who was at the time, rumoured to have committed suicide before they all departed for university.

Now Toby is at the forefront of two mysteries - that of the skull in the garden and also of who tried to kill him when the burglary on his flat went wrong.  Is there a connection?  Tana French clearly shows that you can choose your friends but you certainly cannot chose your family.  Do you even really know them as well as you think you do, and when push comes to shove, do they even have your back at all?  It is certainly a novel about relationships more than anything and makes for interesting reading in that respect.  This is the sort of novel that could strike up some interesting conversations in a book group.

Happy Reading

Miss Chapters x

In Conversation with Gillian McAllister

In Conversation with Gillian McAllister

Today I'm in conversation with Gillian McAllister, author of four cracking crime novels, with one new one due out this Spring.  So without further ado, let's chat on....

Not only are you an author, but you are also a lawyer. How important was it to you to include a side of that in your writing?

I don’t think it was important, as such. To me, it just felt natural. I became a lawyer because I was interested in the justice system, the idea of guilt and retribution, and so much more. To me, humans making good decisions, bad decisions, and spur-of-the-moment decisions, and the punishment society imparts, is the stuff of being human.


What are your favourite books to read?

At the moment I mostly re pre-releases within my own genre: I like to keep up with what’s doing well, what works and what doesn’t, and the cultural conversations taking place. The perfect book for me would be a thriller that blends in credible, realistic and heartfelt relationships. The sort of thing I try to write…


Crime novels can be a bit far-fetched at times. Is fact stranger than fiction?

I have a big commitment to realism in my novels – I agonise over plot so that it seems real and it’s something I think my readers appreciate. There are some news stories I am itching to use but they’re just too bizarre!


Any advice to anyone dreaming of becoming an author?

Write the book. It’s the simplest and hardest thing, to spend hundreds of hours on something that may come to nothing, and I think our sensible and logical brains try to stop us from doing that. It’s hard because it’s a hard thing to do, not because you’re rubbish at it or not meant to be doing with it.


Where do you get your writing inspiration from?

News stories, good writing, great TV dramas, and gossip.


What are you working on next?

I’m writing a book about two people who find themselves on either side of witness protection.


If, heaven forbid, there was a fire, what possession would you grab first to save?

I’m sad to say it would be my laptop containing my work in progress. Over all other things, including my cat. How embarrassing.


What five people, living or dead, would you choose to invite to a dinner party?

Zadie Smith, Lee Child, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath and Michael Stipe from REM.

Gillian's new novel, The Evidence Against You, is out on 18 April 2019. It’s about a woman whose father murdered her mother. After serving 20 years for it, having been convicted due to overwhelming evidence, he gets out and tells her he didn’t do it. But is he telling the truth?

Thank you Gillian for taking part with in conversation with and I can't wait to read your new novel in April. 

Happy Reading

Miss Chapters x

The Stranger Diaries

The Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffiths

Published by Quercus

November 2018

Clare Cassidy is no stranger to tales of murder. As a literature teacher specialising in the Gothic writer R.M. Holland, she teaches a short course on them every year. Then Clare's life and work collide tragically when one of her colleagues is found dead, a line from an R.M. Holland story by her body. The investigating police detective is convinced the writer's works somehow hold the key to the case.

Not knowing who to trust, and afraid that the killer is someone she knows, Clare confides her darkest suspicions and fears about the case to her journal. Then one day she notices some other writing in the diary. Writing that isn't hers...

This is a stand-alone novel from Elly Griffiths, following on from her two successful series featuring Ruth Galloway and Stephens & Mephisto.  I already love her books so was excited to see how this would pan out - clue: I wasn't disappointed.

Our central character is Clare Cassidy, single parent, teacher and would-be author.  She works at a school where a long-dead author, the mysterious R.M.Holland used to live (think M.R.James).  Clare likes to read some of his spooky stories to her classes to help them improve their writing.  The start of the book sees the death of one of Clare's colleagues and a tantalising link to the writing of Holland. The police think that the killer may have a link to the school.  

Clare has a habit of keeping a diary and the police ask her to recall her friendship with Ella and of a particular event in both of their lives.  Flicking back through the diaries, Clare discovers some writing at the bottom of one of the pages - only the handwriting isn't hers!  Who wrote it, how did they get hold of her diary, and what do they want with Clare?

A second death occurs and the link to Holland is now firmly in place, as is a second diary note left for Clare.  It would seem that the killer is reading her diaries and is trying to protect Clare from those who may have upset her.  Clare doesn't know what to do, should she leave the school and take her daughter Georgia with her to protect her from this situation or by remaining at Talgarth High will it draw the killer out?

Elly Griffiths holds the tension with her settings, and even when Clare and Georgia escape up to Scotland, she keeps the atmosphere going.  I didn't guess who the killer was, though with hindsight I probably could have, but for me that isn't what the story is about.  It is about relationships, and keeping secrets, and emotions and how real life is affected by all of these.

Happy Reading

Miss Chapters x